Fidelity
by TnT6713
Summary: "Tonight, you dream of Sherlock Holmes, and, yes, it does make you cry."


_Shake it up_

It's so disgustingly fitting that both the first and last times you see Sherlock Holmes are at St. Bart's, like your life has come full circle. Or, at least, that's what your therapist thinks—though she doesn't use quite that language. She thinks there's closure in circular things, like the rotation of the Earth or the eye of a hurricane. And that's all well and good for her and her linear life, all straight and narrow, with clearly defined borders and pathways, but to your despairingly circular life, the one in which you keep going around and around and around until it makes you sick, you just can't see the closure in something that doesn't seem to end.

The walls in this café are nearly unbearably yellow, like someone looked directly at the sun and said, "Yes, this is what I want my restaurant to look like!" It's not the nicest establishment but the tables are small and clean and the waitresses are polite and pretty and don't ask if you're all right 'cause it looks like you've been crying or maybe you just haven't been sleeping all right—have you been sleeping all right? And no, you haven't, but every time they ask you just feel so fake and sick and you need to find a new café because you'd just feel so wrong coming back. But these waitresses are nice. They ask very sweetly every so often if you'd like some more coffee and yes, yes, you would, please, just a little bit more, thanks so much, and they don't make snide comments or look at you like you've got nine heads because you can't seem to stop talking to yourself and cup after cup of coffee has gone cold and you've been staring at the same page of the daily newspaper for over an hour now, and they don't even ask you if you're homeless, which is nice, because you're sure you look homeless—you probably smell homeless, too.

The radio station playing softly in the background—it probably sounds louder to everyone who isn't in your head—is on some 'Best of the Early 2000s' kick or something, because you sort of recognize the song, a little bit. The tune is somehow familiar, like it was something an ex-girlfriend hummed around the house day and night. It's a lovely, upbeat melody, something girly and sweet, the kind of thing you'd be ashamed to admit you enjoyed when you were young. Maybe if the buzzing in your head would just _shut up_ for a minute, you could hear the words. But the buzzing never stops. The buzzing distracts you from, well, everything else.

_I never loved nobody fully_

_Always one foot on the ground_

_And by protecting my heart truly_

_I got lost in the sounds_

If you're totally honest, you really don't mind the buzzing. Sure, it keeps you up at night, but you haven't slept in a month anyway, and constant buzzing is so much kinder than an empty flat and the deafening oblivion of loneliness that's filled in the places where his voice used to be. Yeah, you'd much rather have the buzzing in your head, the constant vibration that accompanies your perpetual headache. You guess that's what happens when you haven't slept in a month and you haven't eaten in a week and sometimes you can still smell burning flesh coming from the kitchen, like he's microwaved the thumbs again. He's made a home inside your head like the worst kind of parasite: you can't shake him off, and you know you should hate his nagging presence, but you just can't seem to let yourself let him go. He's just as much a part of you as you are, and it's killing you—you swear, it's killing you.

You keep waking to the loud, strained sound of a violin and finding only the buzzing in your head and the thunderous vacuum into which he and his violin have vanished. The funny thing about screaming into the vacuum of space is that the void absorbs everything—the emptiness just gets fuller and fuller—and no one can hear it, not even you.

A plain, pear-shaped woman with limp blonde hair and two chins pours you another cup of coffee and wipes her hands—twice on each side—on the small off-white service apron wrapped loosely around her hips. It takes you a little too long to realize she's talking to you.

"Cutting you off after this cup. You want another, you're getting decaf."

"I'm not homeless," you snap, a kneejerk reaction, your eyes still glazed over as though you haven't yet been snapped from your stupor, having not even listened well enough to make out the sounds of her words more than a tortured buzzing in your head. This must be your eighth or ninth cup, which is just as well, because most days you won't even get out of bed for fewer than ten.

She looks at you, clearly uncomfortable, and shuffles off to attend to some other customers somewhere far away from the crazy man in the too-large coat muttering to himself and drinking cold coffee and insisting he isn't homeless even though he's been in that seat since the shop opened this morning and probably won't leave until well after it closes.

You bring the cold porcelain mug to your lips, sipping hot coffee for the first time in almost an hour. Even through the coffee you can't stop muttering broken shards of words you know you've said before but can't—won't—remember where or why. The dams in your mind and mouth can't keep them in.

"You... you told me once that you weren't a hero… Um, there were times I didn't even think you were human… But—But—But—But let me tell you this, you were the best, the best, the best man, the most human... human being that I've— and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, so… there… I was so alone, and I owe you so much—so much, so— But, please, there's just one more thing, one, one thing, one, one more thing, one more miracle… Don't be—Stop this… St-stop—stop, stop this, this… Sher—Sh—Sherl—Shh—hrmph…"

You go home tonight and throw up and you don't even bother to brush your teeth afterwards; you've gotten so used to just collapsing everywhere you go.

_I hear in my mind_

_All these voices_

_I hear in my mind all these words_

_I hear in my mind all this music_

_And it breaks my heart_

By April it's getting almost unbearably difficult to pay Mrs. Hudson for the rent and such. You can't go back to working at St. Bart's—you don't think you could ever go back to that place at all—because your therapist says you have post-traumatic stress disorder or something and you aren't stable enough to earn an income so maybe those waitresses in those coffee shops who looked at you with such disdain were right and you might as well be homeless.

A tall man in a long coat brushes past you and your heart leaps into your throat, your palms begin to sweat—it can't be—he's—you saw him—But the man furiously shakes his head at his cell phone, a stream of expletives falling from his mouth like a dripping tap in a voice too soft and high and a little bit Irish to be _him_ and your heart plummets from your throat to the pit of your stomach before you can comprehend what you've just seen and heard. Your head hurts. It's buzzing so loudly now.

You consider it a personal accomplishment not having had a song stuck in your head in at least a year—so when a barely familiar, girly melody washes out the buzzing in your head, so soft and saccharine, well, you really don't know what to do. It almost hurts more now, but in a dull, throbbing way, rather than the sharp, stabbing pain of the buzzing. You try to keep yourself from humming on the way back to the flat you really can't afford, because sweet, feminine melodies aren't for humming when your heart is lost somewhere in your large intestine and you think you might've just seen your dead best friend's doppelganger. No, this kind of melody is for freshly baked cakes and tea with Mrs. Hudson and days when your best friend isn't dead and you aren't almost homeless. But today isn't any of those things.

Your left hand trembles more than usual as you unlock the front door to apartment 221B. Once inside, you collapse in his chair—which you like to pretend still smells like him—and fall asleep to the melody in your head. You don't wake up again until May or June. But none of that matters to you anymore.

_And suppose I never ever met you_

_Suppose we never fell in love_

_Suppose I never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft_

Three years is a very long time. You own nice clothes and picture frames now, and a microwave that's never heated eyeballs. You have sofas and carpets and your supply of toilet paper is greater than your supply of latex gloves, which you guess some people would call progress. You might not have been to Baker Street in nearly two years, but you don't mind. This neighborhood is better anyway. The only time you've ever come close to dying in this house was when Mary thought it would be a good idea to let you cook for a night. You don't do that anymore.

It's a Saturday. She's drinking orange juice straight from the carton and you've been staring at the same page of this newspaper for half an hour now. This gold wedding band is snug around your finger, but not so tight that it's painful. It's just enough so that you can't ever forget it's there—not that you'd want to, of course, because Mary is wonderful and you love her, but still. If you ever decided that you _did_ want to forget about it, well, it'd be a struggle. But that's fine, because you love Mary to bits.

"I think I want to shave my mustache," you announce, your eyes still fixed on the same spot between two paragraphs you've been staring at for at least twenty minutes.

She doesn't say anything, possibly because she's got orange juice in her mouth, probably because it wasn't a particularly important proclamation and doesn't necessarily call for a response. She's going to go about her day and you're going to go about yours and you'll fall in love again around the same time you fall into bed tonight. She'll kiss you like molasses and you'll sleep without the sound of violins, and it'll be right.

Three years is a really long time.

_Suppose I never ever saw you_

_Suppose we never ever called_

_Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall_

_Just to break my fall_

You take Mary out to dinner for your anniversary. You decide not to shave the mustache because, really, nobody cares that much about a mustache. Mary's telling you some story about something somebody said at lunch—or maybe it's something somebody _spilled_ at lunch—and you're only half listening because you're also trying to focus on the menu, but the words all blend together and somewhere across the room you hear a faint, sharp intake of breath and a whispered exhalation of _John_—

You turn your head to be greeted by familiar cheekbones and a lump in your throat that you can neither explain nor breathe through. You don't look long enough to notice any other painfully familiar features, like the shape of his lips or the length of his neck or the mop of dark curls on his head—but your left hand begins to tremble, tapping intermittently against the table. You squeeze your eyes shut tight, trying so hard to just inhale and exhale slowly, because maybe if you can melt away the anxiety that's seized up your chest, you can pretend you never heard the gasp from across the room or the soft, involuntary call of your name. You can pretend everything's fine, which it is—it's fine—all fine—everything's fine—

"John?"

You carefully pry open one eye at a time, reminding yourself to keep breathing, just keep breathing. You're scared of how concernedly she's looking at you.

"I'm fine," you tell her. "Everything is… fine."

She gives you that look she gives you when she knows you're lying to her, but you assure her again that you are, in fact, fine—because you are. Everything's fine.

Your hand won't stop shaking.

_All my friends say that of course it's gonna get better_

_Gonna get better_

_Better, better, better, better_

_Better, better, better_

Tonight, you dream of Sherlock Holmes, and, yes, it does make you cry.

You dream about the smooth expanse of his neck and how it goes on for days, how he goes on for days. You dream about running in and out of alleys and tubes and tunnels, weaving your way through the gristly underbelly of the city, his scarf and coat billowing in the evening wind. You dream about cutting yourself on his cheekbones again and again like some sort of masochist (you're starting to think you're some sort of masochist) and healing the wounds with his marshmallow lips. You dream about deerstalkers and bullet holes in the living room wall. You toss and turn all night, tormented by the life you used to have.

Never have you been more thankful Mary is such a heavy sleeper.

Around four in the morning you slide out of bed and make a niche for yourself on the sofa, where there's no threat of your thoughts leaking out across the pillows and into Mary's head. You can bite down on the corners of stiff cushions here, trapping strangled sobs in your throat, praying for the proper dams to keep in your tears. They fall anyway. You've never been very religious, anyway.

You don't even know why you're crying, really. It was just a word, just a cheekbone, just a nightmare. It was nothing you haven't seen before. Maybe you're just overwhelmed.

Or maybe you're hallucinating.

You know, because he's dead.

Dead.

You still remember the smell of blood on the concrete, the tang of copper in the air, the way his words weighed heavy on your tongue. You still remember the things he did, the things he said. You saw it. You saw everything. You remember shutting down completely. You remember sleeping in his bed that night, because you couldn't bear the thought of not smelling him everywhere you went. You curled up on his mattress, under his covers, the stupid deerstalker pressed tightly to your chest. That night, you had dreamt of the smooth expanse of his neck going on for days, running through alleys and tubes and tunnels and the gristly underbelly of the city, cutting yourself on his cheekbones forever. You couldn't bring yourself to breathe for a few days.

You can't fall back asleep. Sometime around five, your ragged hiccups slow to steady, shallow breaths, and the drilling in your head begins again, dull and unyielding, just like how it was when you lived in coffee shops and bright, poppy music played softly through tinny speakers somewhere you didn't bother to try to see.

You can still recite, nearly word-for-word, what you said the first time you visited his grave—and after giving up on sleep for the fourth time tonight, you decide you might as well do it.

"You... you told me once that you weren't a hero," you whisper into the darkness. "Umm, there were times I didn't even think you were human. But let me tell you this, you were the best man, the most human... human being that I've ever known, and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, so there. I was so alone, and I owe you so much. But, please, there's just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be... dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this."

You drift off into a dreamless slumber somewhere between the third time you imagine the taste of his lips and seven, violins playing in your head all the while.

_I never loved nobody fully_

_Always one foot on the ground_

_And by protecting by heart truly_

_I got lost in the sounds_

The next week passes without incident, but you receive a text from a blocked number on Sunday evening that leaves your whole body trembling for hours.

"I'm sorry. –SH"

Your immediate reaction is to drop your phone on the hard wood floor and scream _FUCK THE DAMS _and bawl—so that's what you do. Mary makes tea and sits with you on the sofa all night and tries to comfort you, but you can't really expect her to have done well because, really, she has no idea—she never met him—she never knew how much you cared about him, how much you loved—

An hour and forty-five minutes after the first text arrives, the second one appears.

"Come to Baker St when convenient. –SH"

Mary holds you. You feel light-headed. Everything is wrong. Your life hurts.

Six minutes pass.

"Please. –SH"

You can't not go.

The violins in your head play you out.

_I hear in my mind all these voices_

_I hear in my mind all these words_

_I hear in my mind all this music_

_And it breaks my heart_

_It breaks my heart_

You wake up on Tuesday with a renewed heaviness in your heart, your wedding band tight around your finger like a noose, and the taste of Sherlock Holmes on your lips.

He breaks your heart fresh every day—always has, always will. You know that now.

You guess he keeps breaking you because he was taught as a child to always put things back exactly the way you found them. In your case, that means damaged. But that's all speculation.

You love Mary, you do, but Sherlock Holmes has waltzed in and out of your life like a hurricane, leaving behind a trembling pile of rubble where you used to stand. You don't think he ever loved you the way you love, loved, will love him. Tenses were never your strong suit. He never promised you anything—only that it would be dangerous. So, in the end, it's your own fault, really.

It's like your therapist always used to say: there's closure in circular things.


End file.
